A month ago, we featured Autumn’s Dawn first full length album here on Black Forest Magazine. It’s really an unique piece of depressive rock which mainly is a product of two creative minds getting together to create music. I hooked up with Tim Yatras aka Sorrow, to have a chat with him about his side project Autumn’s Dawn, and his main solo project Germ.

If I have understood you correctly, Autumn’s Dawn is a cooperation where you and Anguish get together and work on material that doesn’t fit your individual projects. Am I right? Did you already have material that fitted together, or did you compose a lot of the material together?

Yes, that’s pretty much it [laughs]. We both are constantly writing music, and thus have a lot of material which may not fit our main bands. We both had material written in regards to the debut EP – in fact, that EP was basically made up of riffs that we had laying around. When we decided to do AD we compiled our ideas together and came up with the EP, but when we did “Gone”, almost all material for that was written specifically for the album. We pretty much started from scratch with that one.

I think you have released quite a diverse album, and at times I found it hard to put a label on the whole album. Even though the basis is depressive rock, you even touch everything from softer music to black metal. Was this intended, or just a consequence of your way of working together?

This is absolutely just us working together. When we set out to write the album, we just said we would do what comes naturally, and not worry about any genre limitations, or worry about what people may think or anything. Originally the album actually started out even less BM than what it ended up being, but along the way, and especially once we began the recording, more and more BM elements crept in. At the end of the day, I think it’s fair to say that we just made an honest album without thinking too much about it. It is what it is, I’m not proclaiming it to be a masterpiece or anything, but I think it’s a pretty cool depressive rock album with some BM elements here and there.

Anguish and Sorrow

When we set out to write the album, we just said we would do what comes naturally, and not worry about any genre limitations, or worry about what people may think or anything.

In Germ you played some selected gigs, but I haven’t seen much live activity lately. Do you still plan to do more shows, even with Autumn’s Dawn, or do you prefer to be more of a studio artist?

Regarding Germ live shows, I think I’m just about done with shows within Australia. I did a few shows at the end of last year and the start of this year, I think that’s enough for now, for Australia at least. I’ll focus attention elsewhere in the world for 2015. As for AD live shows, we have no plans at the moment to play live, however we have not ruled anything out. If we get a good offer, we may take it up! Lets just see what the future holds…

Do you have any plans for Autumn’s Dawn in the future, or will it still work as a side project?

AD will always be a side project. Anguish and I will always have our main bands which will take priority. Having said that, I honestly believe AD will continue on for the forseeable future. We work really well together, and I’m sure at some point next year we’ll get together and start working on a new album. Maybe we’ll even do a few live shows, who knows!?

I must admit that Falloch’s debut album ‘Where Distant Spirits Remain’ from 2011 has been spinning more than once. Their mixture of post-rock and folk metal has something refreshing about it. When they the year after announced that their vocalist Andy Marshall had decided to quit the band, it felt like they had lost a huge part of their sound. Andy actually went on to form Saor, which actually works within the same genre.

Falloch went on and hired a new vocalist in Tony Dunn, entered the studio and recorded their sophomore album ‘This Island, Our Funeral’. And I must say, Tony Dunn’s vocals fits the band perfectly. I’m not sure if I think that the album is reaching up to their debut, but they have definitely matured musically as a band. So, if you’re into post-rock with folk-influences, you know what to do!

If you have wandered in the dark world of Instagram, I’m sure you have come across the two creative ladies Laura Prieto-Velasco known for her Hunter Gatherer Jewelry, and Lakshmi Ramgopal also known as the musician Lykanthea. After they got to know each other and since became friends, they found it only natural to join creative forces when Lakshmi was to release her solo debut Migration this summer. Now they are launching a jewellery collection together. In that regard, we wanted to get to know the two dark artisans, and hear some more on what inspires them – and what to expect in near future.

Laura on the left, Lakshmi on the right.

First off, could you tell us a bit about yourselves, and how you got to know each other as artists?

Lakshmi: I’m a musician in Chicago, IL. I’ve been a member of various bands in Chicago for a decade or so, but I’ve only recently begun writing and performing under the solo moniker Lykanthea. I learned classical South Indian music, flute and violin as a child, but I came to music seriously only as an adult when I realized it was the best form with which to communicate my ideas.

I discovered Laura’s work on Instagram in summer 2013. Her work spoke to me right away, since it conveys a stark, strong beauty that was consistent with the themes I was developing for the EP. I got in touch with her to see if she could loan some of her pieces for photo shoot I was organizing, since I needed some press photos for the EP. I hadn’t written a note of the EP at that point, but her response to my ideas was warm and supportive. It was through that shoot that we became friends and collaborators. Laura’s ideas about the creative and destructive, which are drawn from her long experience as a metalsmith and which were shaping her Exitium collection, helped me to think more clearly about the EP’s visual world. Working with Laura quickly became more than styling photo and video shoots, and became instead an artistic and intellectual exercise about how physical objects can become records of the process of acquiring self-knowledge and provide new meaning and context to sound.

Laura: I’m an artist and educator based in Chicago with a background in metalsmithing and design. I’ve been involved with several facets of these fields over the years and recently began making ready to wear leather and metal accessories under the label Hunter Gatherer.

Lakshmi initially contacted me though my Instagram page and asked if I might be interested in styling a shoot for her upcoming solo album. We began by exchanging visual inspiration in a shared board on Pinterest and found that our work intersected conceptually in some really interesting ways. At the time I was developing work for “Exitium” which was inspired by the brutality of physical and conceptual death as a necessary part of living processes. After meeting Laks and learning more about her expertise of the ancient world’s interpretation of these same concepts I realized this connection was really special and knew in my gut I had to work with this amazing human being. We also really clicked as friends, and have been relentlessly supportive of each other. I don’t know, I just believe in her and I think she believes in me too.

Migration tape wrapped in Hunter Gatherer custom packaging.

What was Lakshmi’s inspiration when making her solo debut Migration? How did you come to choose the goddess Inanna as a concept for your music?

Lakshmi: I knew last winter that I had an album in me that needed to be written and shared, but I didn’t know what would be its marrow, its narrative backbone. Then I discovered Inanna’s story, which is inscribed as a series of hymns in cuneiform script on four-thousand-year-old tablets from the kingdom of Sumer in ancient Mesopotamia, soon after the death of the folklorist Diane Wolkstein. I had met Diane briefly at a wedding in Dallas a few years ago, but what I did not learn until her passing was that she had collaborated with a Sumerologist to translate and arrange these cuneiform tablets for a project that culminated in her book Inanna, Queen of Heaven and Earth. I had an epiphany as I read about Wolkstein’s book: this was the story I was looking for.

The hymns she translated and arranged describe the life of Inanna as she grows from a girl into a powerful goddess and queen, dies, and returns from death. Her journey to and from the underworld was compelling, since she is described as struggling to enter it, finding herself trapped there, then ultimately escaping. At each stage of this journey, she undergoes physical transformations that reflect personal change and new insights into herself. The complexity of the text, the descent into and out of darkness it described, and its triumphantly thoughtful narrative, struck me as a challenging and rewarding way of exploring ideas about change. Interestingly, Inanna’s life-altering descent into darkness came to mirror a number of difficult experiences I underwent in the year I spent writing and recording the EP, so the choice of text was fruitful in many, many ways.

Behind the scenes on Lykanthea’s music video.

I wrote much of the EP while I was in Greece last fall doing dissertation research and, in particular, on the mostly uninhabited island of Delos. While I was there, I was cut off from the rest of the world – I had no phone or internet access. The quietness of the island and the roar of the waves around me put me in a unique, meditative state that is reflected in the EP’s ambient, dreamy tones. While in Greece, I also made time to visit exceptionally ancient places, like Mycenae, to see if I couldn’t recapture the knowing silence that the ruins there seem to have.

Migration is the first of several releases based on these texts about Inanna. Something I’ve learned over the course of researching my doctoral thesis is that one comes to new and different understandings of texts and art by revisiting them over time. I also experienced this while working on the EP. Random life events would unexpectedly illuminate parts of the hymns which had made no sense to me or which I previously had not found interesting. As my understanding of the tablets grew, so did the sense that I didn’t understand them at all. So my goal is to return to Inanna’s story intermittently to see how I respond to it and the idea of personal transformation in song form. My guess is that my reaction to this powerful text will change in tandem with my own growth and development as a person. That said, I don’t think my next release will be based on Inanna’s story, since I want to return to the text with fresh eyes. Nor am I sure how many Inanna-related releases there will be in total. But the texts exert a hold on me that I’m sure will last a long time.

Cuffs from Lykanthea & Hunter Gatherer Jewelry’s Capsule Collection.

Laura, could you tell us about the jewellery you have created earlier? How was the creative process with Lakshmi towards the finalization of the collaboration collection?

Laura: The jewellery I created was a mix of one of a kind cast bronze and hand hammered sheet metal designs with a matte black powder coat finish paired with whip-like accessories made out of salvaged leatherwear collected throughout Chicago. My creative process usually starts with something or someone that deeply inspires me. I start by creating a set of abstract personal goals to keep me motivated and interested in the work as it is created. In this case I was initially inspired by cycles of creative and destructive processes intrinsic to social and natural phenomena; which are more evident during Chicago’s harsh winters. My overarching goal was to develop a ready to wear unisex collection that allowed me to explore one of a kind processes through a limited production series.

Migration Tape Collaboration Rings used in the packaging of the EP.

Previous to Exitium, my first collections were designed in a very linear way. I would begin with a set concept, develop sketches and finalize these ideas in finished products. I found this approach to be extremely limiting and often times I would become frustrated and disenchanted with the outcome and want to destroy everything and start again because it did not meet my standards.

For my own practice and teaching I think it is crucial to allow for the creative space to respond to the work as it was being created including editing the work as it is being made. Over the years I have destroyed many pieces due to this critical nature, but it is all part of the process. Having been working as an independent creative professional for over a decade, inviting others into my personal vision during the formative stages is certainly not an easy thing to do. However, I have found that when the collaboration is a good fit, the other person’s influence and objective perspective significantly strengthen the work. Special individuals, such as Lakshmi and a few others, have a particular kind of creative energy that is so intoxicating and inspiring that I can’t deny that my creative shell needs penetrating every now and then. They have become extremely important agents in the development of my work by contributing to and contextualizing my ideas in ways I would never have expected.

Currently we are working on a collaboration of limited edition pieces incorporating interpretations of lyrics from Migration into unisex cuffs in a small capsule collection. We recently released a test collaboration which featured the creation of limited edition cassettes of Migration wrapped in custom Hunter Gatherer Packaging. Though we have worked together on visual projects before, I would say this is our first attempt to fuse our practices together in a physical object that people will hopefully connect with as well as incorporate into their personal styles. We plan to release them in early October, 2014 via Hunter Gatherer’s online shop.

Lykanthea + Hunter Gatherer Jewelry – The Capsule Collection

Thanks to Lakshmi and Laura for letting us get a glimpse into their creative minds, and for giving us some really interesting views on a collaboration process. I’m so glad there are small independent and dark artisans to drape the world in their beautiful shadows – just like Hunter Gatherer Jewelry and Lykanthea. Be sure to support them!

This band catched our interest with their promising self-titled debut EP earlier this year. This is the band of two Australian muscians by the names of Sorrow and Anguish, and being fans of Sorrow’s other work in other projects (Germ, Austere, Naxzul, Grey Waters etc.), we instantly knew it would be good. This time he teamed up with the session live guitarist from his solo project Germ.

While their EP walked down a traditional path of depressive post-black metal, Autumn’s Dawn has evolved their sound more into their own. In many ways ‘Gone’ shows a more accessible side of themselves, and at times sounds like Grey Waters meets the Finnish metal scene with bands such as Insomnium and Sentenced. They experiments with different vocal styles and genres, and handles all of them in a beautiful way. Even though I’m not 100% sure if they have found their right place yet, they are definitely heading towards an interesting territory. Be sure to check out ‘Gone’, and keep an eye out for Autumn’s Dawn.

Tracklist:1. The Ashes Of A Life2. Until My Heart Corrodes With Rust3. Into The Cold4. Grace Of The Grave5. When The Sun Sets For The Last Time6. Blank Stare, Dead Eyes7. Dawn8. Through The Rusted Gates Of Time9. Gone

Falls of Rauros have been around for a while, and will be releasing their third full-length album some time soon through Bindrune Recordings in the US, and Nordvis in Europe. The album has been characterized as a atmospherically charged form of black metal with desperately screamed vocals, passionate guitar work that finds influence in classic rock, classic country, folk, yet not sounding like any one genre specifically. We had a chat with one of the founding members Aaron about their new album ‘Believe in no Coming Shore’, and their future plans.

When we last heard from you, you did a split with Panopticon. Is the new material following in the same direction? Can you tell us a little about what we can expect this summer?

After hearing the record however-many-times it’s difficult to say if the new material is similar or not to the songs on the ‘Panopticon’split. The instrumentation on ‘Believe in no Coming Shore’ isn’t quite the same; for example we traded out the clean singing and woodwinds found on ‘The Purity of Isolation’ for textural keyboards and a couple lap steel appearances. It’s also our first release to feature 5-string bass throughout its entirety and we left plenty of space for that expanded range in the mix. The bulk of the album is still based around a guitars-bass-drums configuration as we wrote the album in a live setting with plans to perform these songs and not have to sacrifice or omit many components or details. I guess I would say the new record doesn’t really sound much like our recent split or last couple records. We had no intention of writing a “sequel” to ‘The Light That Dwells in Rotten Wood’ or ‘Hail Wind and Hewn Oak’ and that’s certainly not how it turned out.

When I looked at the tracklist, two of the songs contained the word ‘ancestor’. It almost gave me the impression that the record is conceptual?

The album is vaguely “conceptual” in the way that our last couple records were, but is by no means a concept album. Whatever headspace I’m in while writing lyrics will usually be nurtured and carried through till completion so there are several lyrical themes and motifs that surface from track to track. The goal was cohesion without any outright narratives or a rigid concept. ‘Ancestors of Shadow’ and ‘Ancestors of Smoke’ were written as one long song and wound up being two. They work on an individual basis but are intended to be played consecutively as they share musical ideas more prominently and obviously than the rest of the record.

It seems you are touring a bit this autumn? Will you just tour in the US, or are you coming overseas?

For now we’re just going to be touring in the US. It will be a very a brief East Coast tour that essentially takes us down to Tampa, Florida for the Southern Darkness Festival on August 23rd. We hope to do more touring this winter and it’s a goal of ours to play out more in general. We’ll see exactly when and to what extent. Playing in Europe would be an absolute dream but logistically doesn’t seem in the cards for us at the moment. Rest assured, some day we’ll make it out there.

Falls of Rauros – Believe in no Coming Shore

For more information about the band and their music, you can check out their Facebook, Blog, and Bandcamp.

The Austrian analogue photographer Krist Mort is releasing her new book ‘Inlumaeh’ 14th of August 2014.

The book contains 90 pages of color aswell as black and white photographs from 2011 to present. It comes with a special CD which Russian esoterist Lamia Vox exclusively recorded for this project, and is limited to 450 copies. The textured hardbound cover has a gold foil debossing and a matte varnish, and is designed by our fellow Norwegians Trine+Kim. Everything has been released by Cyclic Press – a new division of Cyclic Law, a Canadian Record Label.

Krist Mort tells us that the word ‘Inlumaeh’ relates to the connection and interaction of light and darkness.– Where there is illumination a shadow is always cast and therefore all shadows originate in light. This kind of symbiosis is, what all of my images are about – the strange connection between two things so utterly different, yet they still relate to each other and cannot be without the other. Life and death, creation and destruction…

At the moment we’re listening to this newly released thrashy black’n’roll mayhem. Kvlthammer is a quite new band, as it was formed in 2011. The band consists of members of bands such as Skeletonwitch, Coffinworm, and Demiricous. Their self-titled debut album was released July 15th, 2014, and you can check it out at their bandcamp.

The band plays uncomprising raw metal right in your face. Their music can at some times remind of acts such as Germ Bomb and Toxic Holocaust. Mix those bands with Motörhead, and you’re pretty close to Kvlthammer. If you really want to be a badass, this is that kind of music that you should be it with. I’m sure that Kvlthammer is an amazing live band, and the good news is that Kvlthammer already has been playing some gigs. I’m pretty sure that it really kicks, as their music really sounds like it was meant to be played live! Be sure to look out for them!

Even though we tend to draw to darker and more extreme genres, it’s not a big secret that we’re big fans of the post-rock genre. This other day we discovered a band called Astralia from Barcelona, Spain. And being fans of both their genre and their place of origin, we decided to get a few words with their guitarist Roger Guzmán.

You obviously follow the tradition of post-rock by not having any vocals. As you have no lyrics, can you please say a little about what stories your songs tell?

Really good one, and tough… Perhaps I would say “feelings or emotions” rather than stories. For me (Roger), this is where the greatness of this genre lies. Instrumental music has the power to scratch in the deepest of your soul, free and blow your mind. Now, the song is not restricted anymore to a closed message or story. You can be carried along, depending on your mood or your feelings at that time. It’s kind of magic. I really enjoy when fans or friends tell us the way they feel the songs or the different things they imagine when listening, each different from the other. You can make the people dream. That’s wonderful.

Where do you draw inspiration for your work?

This question is intimately linked with the first one. I think that the three of us are really inspired by the nature, and I mean nature in every sense. Happiness and sadness, loneliness, the fresh breeze on a summer day, a sunset in the beach, looking at the stars in the mountain… It’s difficult to answer how to capture this into music, but somehow it happens. We try to write emotions in the form of music. At the end, everything is nothing but nature.

We try to write emotions in the form of music.

How is the post-rock scene in Barcelona, or in Spain in general?

Unlike the rest of Europe, where instrumental music is pretty consolidated, here people are not used to listen to music without lyrics. The genre is still growing, faster every day. Even so, several bands could get known in the scene (Toundra, Exxasens, Syberia…) playing in the finest European festivals. Besides, nowadays there are also people working hard to promote instrumental music by setting up dedicated festivals around the country. However, there is much work to do.

You’ve released an EP and an album. What can you tell us about the future of Astralia?

Hopefully touring, writing and recording. This summer we will tour around the north of Spain presenting our new album ATLAS. However, we want to cross the border and we will start planning a small european tour as soon as we finish this one.

We would definitely love to see Astralia on stage, so an European tour sounds great. If you’re into post-rock, you surely know what to do. Watch their video for ‘You Are Here’ or listen to their album ‘Atlas’ below:

When Alfahanne released their debut black’n’roll album ‘Alfapokalyps’ in february 2014, they were pretty new to the scene, allthough some of the members have been active in the black metal movement since the early 90’s in bands like Vinterland and Maze of Torment. On this debut album as Alfahanne, they managed to get guest vocalists such as Hoest from Taake and Kvarforth from Shining. In fact, Alfahanne did a split with Shining last year.

Alfahanne says they play “…alfapocalyptic rock exclusively”. And their formula is black metal with a mix of classic rock, punk and some goth influence.

Idre is probably a new name for the most of you, at least it was for me. They released their first album on May 5th, 2014 through Dust House Records. Their two track album really has a special atmosphere, and even shows some true potential to become something even greater. You can stream the full album at the bottom of this article.

After listening to their album, I decided to hook up with Ryan Davis (guitar, vocals) and Nicholas Wojcik (drums) of this Oklahoma-based trio.

Give us a short introduction to the two tracks on your album. What stories does the songs tell, and does the album have a concept?

Ryan: I wrote “Factorie” over the course of two years or so, during which time I had a few experiences as a migrant laborer. The song itself was highly influenced by these experiences, particularly the multifaceted degradation that my coworkers and I experienced and the toll it all took on our bodies and minds. Though it clocks in at over 26 minutes, the song was initially much longer–it probably could have been a full-length release on its own, and was written for classical guitar, cello and vocals before our current lineup was together. It was also my first attempt to tell a fictional, though very personal, story through a song. When Andon joined on bass we ended up trimming it down.

I think the reason for it’s seemingly incorrect spelling was a desire to make the factory itself a proper noun and to give it agency as the malevolent entity I believe it to be.”Witch Trial” came about much more fluidly and was the first song that our band in it’s current form had all been a part of the writing process together on, and lyrically, is also a kind of Western style story that follows a protagonist.

Thematically and tonally speaking, feelings of anger, alienation, depression and anxiety, coupled with self-destruction and a generally shitty outlook surely play a decent role in the whole songwriting process.

Your music is quite dark and heavy. Where did you get the inspiration for it?

Nick: “Dark and heavy” – thanks, we’ll take that as a compliment. On a basic level, Ryan is responsible for writing the guitar work on the album, which ultimately set the stage for everything else. Beyond that I can only speak for myself. As a drummer, I have a particular interest in dynamics and tonality, and I guess I do tend to stray towards the darker side of things when it comes to the ways in which I explore the drum kit. I listen to a lot of different kinds of music from across the globe, so naturally I do find myself drawing inspiration from other artists, but also equally from outside sources that carry their own sense of power and weight, such as the natural landscape, personal experiences, etc. At rehearsal, I’ll come up with something to compliment Andon and Ryan and test it out. We’ll all talk about it and figure out what works and what doesn’t. Again, we like to take our time. The end result is always something we all collectively feel good about and confident with.

Ryan: I feel as though “dark” comes fairly natural to me as a songwriter. I’ve never been one to listen much to or ever play “fun” music. There’s almost always some sense of melancholy or somberness present in the music I find myself relating to, whether it be as a listener or songwriter. Thematically and tonally speaking, feelings of anger, alienation, depression and anxiety, coupled with self-destruction and a generally shitty outlook surely play a decent role in the whole songwriting process. As far as heaviness is concerned, Nick and I are just a couple of metal heads.

When will we hear more from Idre, and what are your ambitions?

Nick:We have skeletons for 3 new songs we’ve been working on and they seem to pick up right where our debut album left off. We are all anxious about the new material, but we are not ones to rush the creative process either; we like to take our time, start with a framework and build, ironing out all the little nuances along the way. We’ve analyzed the self-titled record ad nauseum and discussed ways in which we’d like to take the next recording to bring forth something that shows that we are growing as a band, as a unit – we have no interest in rehashing the same record over and over. Our plan is to enter the studio before the year’s end, with live dates mixed in there as well. As far as live dates go, this past spring saw us playing a heavy number of regional shows, including some festival dates, so we would therefore like to shift gears and concentrate more on playing cities/states we’ve never been to. It would be great to eventually get to Europe and elsewhere…We certainly welcome any such opportunities that come our way…

We’re really looking forward to what the future brings for Idre, and hopefully you’ll be able to see them live somewhere nearby. Until then, you may check out their album below: